The impact of parliamentary fragmentation and polarisation on government legislative success: evidence from Israel (1951–2014)

The ability of the government to pass its policy initiatives through the legislative process is a cardinal pillar of democratic regimes. In this paper, we study the factors that explain governments’ legislative success rates while paying attention to the supply of policy initiatives and the ability of the government to get them approved. We innovatively theorise about a U-shaped effect of parliament's fragmentation and ideological polarisation on executive's legislative success rates. We use the Israeli case study, with its solid government dominance over the parliament, to ascertain how the characteristics of both the government and the parliament contribute to understanding governments’ success rates. Using data from all governments from 1951 until 2014, we find, among other things, support for our originally hypothesised curvilinear relationship between parliament’s fragmentation and polarisation and the executive’s success rate.